


behind enemy lines

by gdgdbaby



Category: Band of Brothers
Genre: M/M, Slice of Life
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-02
Updated: 2013-01-02
Packaged: 2017-11-23 09:13:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 529
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/620487
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gdgdbaby/pseuds/gdgdbaby
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Their extravagant Christmas dinner ends up being lukewarm minestrone.</p>
            </blockquote>





	behind enemy lines

**Author's Note:**

> christmas in bastogne, written for advent. warnings for vague mentions of violence. originally posted at [livejournal](http://gdgdbaby.livejournal.com/96891.html).

"That cream's going to freeze on your face if you don't shave it off soon. And then where will you be?"

Dick raises his eyebrows and dips his brush back into the water. "Still spending Christmas in Bastogne."

Nix laughs, and it comes out thin and fragile in the subzero air, like the sound could shatter at any moment. "Touché."

 

 

Their extravagant Christmas dinner ends up being lukewarm minestrone, courtesy of Joe Domingus and the meager stock of canned vegetables they still have at their disposal. It tastes better than anything else they've had in the last five days, anyway, and at least clutching at their half-filled cans is good for increasing blood circulation in their fingers, if only for a little while.

Sink drives down from division CP to glad-hand the boys and read out McAuliffe's letter in an attempt to raise morale. Dick watches their faces as they eat and listen. For some of them, it even seems to work.

 

 

They all celebrate in different ways: an extra Lucky Strike, lemon snow cones, the double layering of socks on feet. Dick had almost forgotten what fire smelled like without the accompanying tinge of burnt-out mortar shells and gunpowder. The one in the dell burns clean and crisp, and it's this renewed novelty that allows him to sniff it out while he's on patrol.

"Harry," he croaks, the words clicking in his throat. "Fire's not a good idea." But he moves closer anyway next to Peacock, can't help flexing his fingers in the heat. It's Christmas, after all, and the brief respite is welcome: a couple of minutes, nothing more.

When Harry goes down, Dick doesn't have the heart to tell him to stop screaming—can only numbly rip his pant leg open wider and press his slippery gloves down on the wound. Nix puts the call in to CP, voice steeled against the cold and all the blood staining the snow a deep red.

"Given much thought to mortality?" Nix asks him later, when they're shivering in a foxhole. He's pouring himself a generous measure of VAT 69 as a toast, face white. He stretches his arm out lazily after the first sip and offers him the flask. Dick shakes his head as usual, hands clenching in the frayed blanket their legs are swathed in.

"Since coming to war?" he replies, voice dry. He can hear the faint whiz of tracers in the distance. Sometimes, it is hard to imagine that a whole world still exists above them when the stiff tarp stretches over their slit trench. "Not once."

 

 

It might be the first year in living history that Boxing Day is better than Christmas, and not just because General Patton's division finally breaks through the siege and the 101st regains access to the rest of the army.

For years after, Dick will remember stirring awake the next morning, tangled in the blankets and Nix, their limbs heavy and frozen. Nix mumbles something underneath his breath, teetering on the edge between sleep and consciousness, and shoves his forehead against Dick's shoulder. Through the gap between their tarp and the ground, all he can see is clean white.


End file.
